Chapter 7 - The First Smile
It happened on a Tuesday in late spring.
We were sitting on the wooden deck overlooking the crashing surf. I had tried to teach her how to paint watercolors, though most of the bright blue and yellow pigment had ended up on her nose and fingers rather than the heavy paper.
Sophie stared at her messy masterpiece—a chaotic swirl of primary colors that looked vaguely like a sun exploding over the ocean—and suddenly burst into a sound I hadn't heard in all the months since I found her.
A real, unrestrained, belly-deep laugh.
She looked up at me, her blue eyes sparkling with mischief, and smeared a streak of yellow paint right across my cheek.
"You look funny, Daddy," she giggled, clapping her hands together.
May you like
I stared at her in stunned silence for a second before a slow smile broke across my face. I scooped her up into the air, spinning her around as she shrieked with joy, the sound echoing out over the vast, open ocean.
It was the first time she had laughed out loud since that terrible night in the ballroom. In that moment, watching the sunlight catch her golden hair and listening to the pure, unburdened music of her voice, I knew that the ghosts of the past were finally laid to rest. We had survived the dark.
